"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you."

Because I'm feeling especially deep/nostalgic tonight upon returning home for Christmas vacation, I will attempt to tackle an equally deep topic... the definition of home. There is no one meaning of the term; its ambiguity allows it to be applied to various locations, regardless of whether one actually lived there. Throughout my relatively short life, I have lived in multiple places which I consider to be my home. And each time I left, I was filled with a great longing for my former one. And each time I felt as though I could never feel wholly immersed and complete again. And yet, each time, I always did.

Even beyond the houses and towns I have occupied, I have come to regard many friends' houses as my own. But what is it that makes a house, dorm, or any other place a home? Many scholars and extensively-quoted individuals emphasize the people which accompany you in a place, for as William James once said, "Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world."

After discussing this topic at length in two English classes dedicated to space and place, I still have yet to come to a clear conclusion on the question of what makes a place a home. Yes, I believe it is mainly the people, for how else could you possibly grow attached to a tiny, old dorm room to a point where you are longing to return to it years later if it weren't for the amazing person/people you shared it with? How else do you explain walking into a friend's house that you haven't been to in years and feeling like nothing has changed? And yet, there must be something else which contributes to that feeling of belonging which home conjures.

One of my wisest professors told the freshman English majors in our first department meeting that Cushing-Martin (the building which houses everything English) was our home. And though I don't remember anything else that was told to me during that meeting, that comment is one that will stay with me forever. It is truly impossible to describe the feeling of warmth, ease, and comfort that gave me in the beginning of my college life. I knew then that I had made the right decision and, regardless of whatever traumatic freshman situation I got myself into, realized that, even in the first week, I was home.

So as I sit in my living room wondering why I miss that cramped dorm, I'm noticing that even though this will always be my home for the summer and one month of winter, my sense of belonging has shifted. It's not that I'm displaced or replaced here, but there has just been another home brought into my life. And so rather than being nostalgic for the wholeness of home that this place used to be, I should be glad that I can experience such a feeling of wholeness elsewhere.